September 06, 2010

Meta

I sit down again, tonight, to work on my novel.

I got some excellent feedback from another beta reader, Stephanie O'Dea, of A Year of Slow Cooking. I chose her as a beta reader because she wrote me about six months ago asking about dialogue. Dialogue is one of the very few things I do as a writer and feel very comfortable. Perhaps it's from a lifetime of eavesdropping on other people's conversation, of saving IMs and replaying snippets in my head. I do think I know how people talk to each other. Their conversations are shorter than one would think, they tend to transition very abruptly, to ebb and flow and observe the seven-minute silence.

She suggested three different places in which the novel might begin. I hesitate to begin at two of them, because honestly I don't know how to fill in everything that would happen up to that point, so I'm choosing her third suggestion, which maybe I should've begun with in the first place.

The original first three chapters have been eradicated beyond recognition. They are, perhaps, gone forever. Perhaps they will emerge later as a blog post or an essay. Kill your darlings, they always say in writing class. If I were to kill all my darlings, friends, I would never publish anything. But it is good advice in some regards. To some extent, the sentences I love most were written just for me, and I can appreciate them still even if nobody else ever reads them.

It is what it is to write.

My other beta readers thus far, Kelli Oliver George, my sister and my husband, were appropriately honest in their assessment. All struggled to some extent with the sexual content of the novel, perhaps because it is a young adult novel, and perhaps because they know me, and to know someone is to be uncomfortable with any mention of sex, I think.

I'm changing one of the chapter titles at their mutual discomfort. I named all the chapters after albums that came out in the same period as my novel. They may not have realized it upon their reading -- it is an inside joke with myself and my husband. When I write, I become very method. I need to listen to music that complements what I'm writing about. So this novel is full of seventies classic rock and hair metal, a little Cure and a lot of Depeche Mode, which is what I listened to in the early nineties.

I would like the writing of this novel to be done. But I know it's not finished yet.

It can be paralyzing. I know people who have labored over long works for years, never to reach a point at which they feel comfortable releasing it to the world, seeking an agent, going for the gold. I fear spending too long at it, overanalyzing it within an inch of its life, because I do believe you can at some point jump the shark and begin to ruin everything you excelled at in the beginning. It's difficult to listen to too many opinions at the outset and not take every bit of advice. You can't take so much the novel ceases to be true to you, the author.

These are the thoughts swirling through my head as I sit down to write tonight. I will purposely release this post and close down the Internet, isolate myself from Twitter and e-mail and any other method of reaching me. I have my earphones clamped on my head; I'm alone in the library. It's Monday night, and there's work to be done, darlings to be murdered, and I'm the murderess alone fit for the job.

Comments

Meta

I sit down again, tonight, to work on my novel.

I got some excellent feedback from another beta reader, Stephanie O'Dea, of A Year of Slow Cooking. I chose her as a beta reader because she wrote me about six months ago asking about dialogue. Dialogue is one of the very few things I do as a writer and feel very comfortable. Perhaps it's from a lifetime of eavesdropping on other people's conversation, of saving IMs and replaying snippets in my head. I do think I know how people talk to each other. Their conversations are shorter than one would think, they tend to transition very abruptly, to ebb and flow and observe the seven-minute silence.

She suggested three different places in which the novel might begin. I hesitate to begin at two of them, because honestly I don't know how to fill in everything that would happen up to that point, so I'm choosing her third suggestion, which maybe I should've begun with in the first place.

The original first three chapters have been eradicated beyond recognition. They are, perhaps, gone forever. Perhaps they will emerge later as a blog post or an essay. Kill your darlings, they always say in writing class. If I were to kill all my darlings, friends, I would never publish anything. But it is good advice in some regards. To some extent, the sentences I love most were written just for me, and I can appreciate them still even if nobody else ever reads them.

It is what it is to write.

My other beta readers thus far, Kelli Oliver George, my sister and my husband, were appropriately honest in their assessment. All struggled to some extent with the sexual content of the novel, perhaps because it is a young adult novel, and perhaps because they know me, and to know someone is to be uncomfortable with any mention of sex, I think.

I'm changing one of the chapter titles at their mutual discomfort. I named all the chapters after albums that came out in the same period as my novel. They may not have realized it upon their reading -- it is an inside joke with myself and my husband. When I write, I become very method. I need to listen to music that complements what I'm writing about. So this novel is full of seventies classic rock and hair metal, a little Cure and a lot of Depeche Mode, which is what I listened to in the early nineties.

I would like the writing of this novel to be done. But I know it's not finished yet.

It can be paralyzing. I know people who have labored over long works for years, never to reach a point at which they feel comfortable releasing it to the world, seeking an agent, going for the gold. I fear spending too long at it, overanalyzing it within an inch of its life, because I do believe you can at some point jump the shark and begin to ruin everything you excelled at in the beginning. It's difficult to listen to too many opinions at the outset and not take every bit of advice. You can't take so much the novel ceases to be true to you, the author.

These are the thoughts swirling through my head as I sit down to write tonight. I will purposely release this post and close down the Internet, isolate myself from Twitter and e-mail and any other method of reaching me. I have my earphones clamped on my head; I'm alone in the library. It's Monday night, and there's work to be done, darlings to be murdered, and I'm the murderess alone fit for the job.